Month: August 2011

When you were in school, you probably noticed that some kids seemed like natural leaders. They were ahead of the pack because they were good at stuff — sports, school or socializing.

Although there was a lot of overlap, another group existed. These kids were good at being popular. That meant somewhat good at socializing, sometimes good at sports, but it wasn’t really any of those things. It was being good at being popular, at knowing how to draw attention to oneself.

When our culture turned leftist in the 1990s, inheriting a president and its ideals from the passive revolts of 1968, the popular kids shifted in composition. It was no longer the football players, honor students and rich kids; it was the freaks, the formerly unpopular, the nerds, outcasts and other rebels.

They had a simple appeal: self-hatred. Our country is bad; our culture is bad; the majority is bad. The only good thing is being different. Be unique, be your own person, have a life, don’t follow the herd, who cares about who succeeds? What matters is being true to yourself, which you show us by being different.

As it always does under liberalism, the focus shifted from “let’s win at life” to “let’s express ourselves and act out our desires, sensations and self-image.” The goal is not end results, but a constant suspension in a method of constant self-expression that makes the individual feel good. Hang the consequences.

Thus continued a gradual process that began thousands of years ago. It flowered in Athens, where democracy went from being a council of wise elders to mob rule, and then into Israel, where anti-Roman revolutionaries perverted the Jewish notion of morality into a pissing contest for egalitarian brownie points. It even blighted Rome, turning a prosperous empire into a decadent and self-pitying collapse.

In revolutionary France, and Russia, it really gained momentum and showed its true colors: a Crowd of selfish individuals, demanding that no one tell them what to do and yet that the group support them, as a means of excusing their own failings in life.

Their purpose was the opposite of what guided conservative Europe, which was a desire to confront one’s own fears and inadequacies and beat them, as a means of achieving better end results and a society of wisdom, beauty and technology.

A recent article in the New York Times spells out the consequences of this gradual liberalization:

If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it’s not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don’t care as much about ideas as they did. In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can’t instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding. Bold ideas are almost passé.

It is no secret, especially here in America, that we live in a post-Enlightenment age in which rationality, science, evidence, logical argument and debate have lost the battle in many sectors, and perhaps even in society generally, to superstition, faith, opinion and orthodoxy. – NYT

Let us quickly summarize: we are living in a post-idea world because ideas are not popular and therefore, not profitable.

In other words, what people want to believe trumps what they can logically believe. We have left reality behind, and replaced it with socialization.

Then again, this was a clear consequence of letting the individual do whatever he or she wanted. Equality makes every decision valid, which means the individual is no longer beholden to any checks on their behavior except laws, social taboos and economics.

As society expands with technology, and it gets easier to earn a basic living, these constraints even relax. As long as you get some kind of job, and keep showing up for even mediocre performance, the paychecks keep rolling. So do the credit cards. This leaves lots of time for insanity.

Over the past forty years, we have seen the family unit collapse as social standards collapsed, and the ability of any two people in any Western country to have anything in common except the trivial collapse. We have seen our institutions follow in this collapse, and now, the performance of our leaders and economy.

Art died a painful death, perhaps first, being converted from the pursuit of meaning to the pursuit of the unique, with meaning explained as a form of justification through increasingly convoluted theories. Despite this seeming to be the arrival of big ideas, it was a retreat from large concepts into small granular explanations.

What is left? An emptiness so profound it impels us to self-destruct, or find some way to embrace the plastic and hollow as “meaningful”:

Ever since the Allies bombed the Axis into submission, Western civilization has had a succession of counter-culture movements that have energetically challenged the status quo. Each successive decade of the post-war era has seen it smash social standards, riot and fight to revolutionize every aspect of music, art, government and civil society.

But after punk was plasticized and hip hop lost its impetus for social change, all of the formerly dominant streams of “counter-culture” have merged together. Now, one mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior has come to define the generally indefinable idea of the “Hipster.”

An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society. – AdBusters

Mainstream and underground together are different symptoms of the same cause, which is a lack of direction. When we replaced reason with popularity, we replaced the notion of any cause in common. That means there is nothing under the surface. Everything is appearance.

You can only drink so many beers, snort so many drugs, take home so many sluts, play so many video games, and express yourself to the empty sky so many times before you see the futility. But what is the option? To deviate from this shallow path is to be seen as a public enemy.

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

As a kid and young adult, I detested the term “maturity” because it meant submission to the adult world and the corresponding bitterness that makes people want to force others into jobs, marriages, friendships and commercial contracts that are equally miserable to what they went through.

It’s like the first day of prison: we all get raped. I did, so I will now enjoy your suffering. Life raped me so it owes me the ability to rape you or someone like you. At least, that’s how they make it appear in the movies, and if anyone knows about this mentality, it’s Hollywood.

Maturation is a different process. Once called “self-actualization,” it is the growth of experience in the mind that allows the purposeful person to separate personal notions, desires, sentiments and fears from reality. When they understand more of reality, they can find a place within it where they can both utilize their skills to good ends, and appreciate what they do.

This is larger than jobs and “adult responsibilities” (a baffling term in contrast to “adult book store,” a term we learned as kids because our freeway transit took us past a place with that same name). It is about recognizing that personal desires are ultimately empty, and one must find some activity to fill the time of life and make it rewarding.

Part of this maturation, the part called self-actualization, consists in getting over oneself. Finding out that the self is not the goal of life, or more accurately, that the self is served best by finding something other than the self to aim for. The other part of maturation is a correspondent intellectual clarity.

When you are caught up in the world of youth, you are on a path. This path leads through school to some mystical place called “adulthood,” like an empty field right beyond the gates. There no path exists; you have to choose your own. Because childhood comes with a context pre-defined, you do not need to think in terms of cause->effect reasoning. You have to think like a shopper, in terms of what effect you want to purchase, and you can take things at face value.

The growth and maturation of the intellect on the other hand consists of finding out what steps you must take to achieve any thing. While as a child you may opt for the class on economics versus the class on facepainting, as an adult you must determine how to investigate and master economics.

A great burden and liberation exists in this. The choices of an adult are creative, or determining what you want and how to make it; the choices of a youth are competitive, or choosing between pre-defined options like products on a shelf. Adulthood takes more intellectual work.

As some have noted, this switch is reflected in politics:

At some point in his first or second year, the average undergraduate comes to a dreadful, shocking, thrilling, intoxicating realization: Everything I was taught to believe until now is a lie. We’re not the good guys. We’re the bad guys: the West, white people, my parents, whatever. Grasping this insight is the key to enlightenment, and enlightenment is the key to, among other things, pulling chicks.

As time passes, most of us move on to a more balanced understanding of life. But that first rush of exhilaration at having pierced the veil, at being granted the power to see through the lies that hold others in their thrall, never really leaves us, and retains its ability to shape our thoughts throughout our lives.

In its most benign form, it presents itself as a harmless contrarianism, of a kind to which this column might occasionally succumb. But under pressure, worked and reworked through the recombinant loops of the obsessive mind, it can progress through various strains of Marxism to conspiracy theories, UFOlogy and worse.

The reflexive oppositionism of so much of the left, its instant identification with whoever or whatever is most hostile to the society of which it is a part, most closely resembles that of the undergraduate. It is a badge, a pose, a lifestyle, an arrangement of reality that is pleasing to believe, a reminder to the believer of the third eye of enlightenment that is his gift. – National Post

When the mind is in a competitive mode, the focus is not on what must I do but judgment of the options that exist. What do you think of this one? Well, here’s my opinion — and yet, those opinions do not involve alteration, improvement or shift in direction. They are assessment, like comparing properties for sale or the pomegranates at competing stalls in a middle east bazaar.

Such thinking is self-reflexive. Am I the type of person who finds this important? Will this fit into my life and self-image? How does this make me look to others? It leads to a view not of the issues themselves, but those issues as filtered through self, socialization, profitability and other non sequitur personal judgments.

Maturation on the other hand involves a certain type of thinking: what do I wish to create? It is not a choice among existing options; you know what those are, and their limitations. As a result, you are forced to analyze the world through cause->effect thinking. If you know your goal, you can analyze similar achievements to find a working method.

This is most radically different from childhood in that there is no inherency. When you’re on a path, you’re choosing between existing options. When you must create your own, the option you choose defines you; there is no teacher, parent or peer group whose monolithic approval determines success or failure. It’s only what you can make work.

Unlike in childhood, when you wandered between choices and picked one, you are looking for something that isn’t there. You will know you succeed by yourself only, not by authority. You want to modify them, to find one that fits your needs by burrowing among many and forcing yourself on them; you want to create a new option.

One reason liberals are children are so rebellious is that they have not yet crossed this threshold, and it makes them angry to face it. They feel impotent, small and unready. Their response is to use the social weight of others who feel the same way to force the creation of a collective path, one that is not a flexible values system like culture, but a singular method of ascent. That way, they again have the linear order of childhood.

We could view the industrial revolution and the political revolutions that accompanied it as a 400-year vacation from adulthood. With enough angry peasants will guillotines, we can re-create the path of childhood through the notion of “progress” toward a dogma ideal. It’s best if that ideal can never be reached, so the path can always exist.

In other words, liberalism arises from the desire of our peasants to be neotenes, or perpetually youthful and yet at the same time, neutered like livestock. Is it any wonder that our society pathologically worships youth and fears death, and encourages domestication and neutering (political correctness) wherever it can?

But a backlash against perpetual immaturism is beginning.

One reason radical right-wing parties were marginalized for a long time in Europe is that they were simply too disreputable. It was worse than uncouth to agitate openly against minorities, let alone to flirt with ideologies that had caused the death of millions. Even to suggest that large-scale immigration could be a problem was considered racist until not so long ago. In such countries as Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands and France, mainstream parties have tended to gang up against radical right-wing parties, blocking them behind what the French call a cordon sanitaire. On the whole, voters for the far right hovered between 10 percent and 15 percent—more than is desirable, perhaps, but few people worried that they would ever get much more.

The cordon first began to crack in Austria and Italy, during the ’90s. This was not so much because Austrians were rediscovering their Nazi sympathies. Indeed, by the late ’90s most politicians on the democratic far right in Europe had tried to distance themselves from Nazi or fascist antecedents. The reason for the Freedom Party’s success was that the Social and Christian Democrats had been in government too long. People voted against a sclerotic establishment. Many Italians felt the same way about the Christian Democrats, who had been propped up for decades, with the help of the United States, to keep the left out. But once the Christian Democrats finally lost power, it wasn’t the left that leapt into the vacuum but Berlusconi, backed by neo-Fascist and anti-immigrant parties, such as Fini’s National Alliance and Umberto Bossi’s Northern League.

{…}

Already by the late ’90s, anti-immigrant feelings were simmering in several European countries, where relatively large numbers of “guest workers,” former colonial subjects and refugees were beginning to make the native majorities feel nervous. Neighborhoods were changing. Jobs were thought to be in peril. Welfare states were felt to be under strain.

And then 9/11 happened, and the murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, and the bombings in Madrid and London—all these atrocities perpetrated by terrorists acting in the name of a violent Islamist revolution.- The Nation

Sadly, this article generates into incoherence from the point above, but it gives us a good summary: while we could indulge in perpetual childhood, we did through the post-WWII years, but with the fall of the Soviet Union, we lost more than an adversary.

We lost a surrogate path.

Now we had to forge a new way. What were our values? Uh… hard work, money, shopping, ethnic food, and …uh… …well, gotta get back to the missus.

It became clear that our culture is empty and meaningless because it lacks purpose, other than the self of course. How could this happen? One side of the political equation wants to keep us in perpetual immaturity, and that’s the left. Coincidentally, they have gone from zero to sixty over the past 200 years.

Under leftism, in other words, we lost our drive toward maturation.

The voters are now correcting that. In the current decade, for the first time since 1789, we’re seeing an inertial shift to the right. Being liberal hasn’t worked out. It has brought disaster and miserable lives, because until we decide to mature, we cannot have values. We get shopping instead.

As this decade churns on, what we will see is not just the refutation of the hybrid consumer/capitalist post-totalitarian system of the post-Cold War period, or the rejection of the post-WWII order of liberal democratic absolutism, or even just the rejection of post-1789 French revolutionary ideals. We are seeing a rejection of the perpetual immaturism that has marked the last 400 years or longer.

In short, we are beginning to see that while “maturity” as defined in our current society is a dead-end, maturation is ultimately to our advantage. It lets us be creative again. Have a purpose again. Enjoy our whole lives again, and stop worrying about dying in a meaningless abyss constructed of leftist politics.

The future is more complicated, but brighter, so long as our turn remains in this direction.

Regrettably, this has to be one of those silly articles that opens with a dictionary citation:

racism, n.

a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others. – Random House Dictionary

I find this aesthetically unappealing. Dictionaries should be for finding the definitions of precise language, not trying to build an argument about what a political concept is. It’s just silly and underperforming to use one, but most will agree we need a standard definition

Yet if we don’t standardize on the simplest and clearest-worded standard possible, we’re going to be liable to “definition creep.” The left loves this: first, it’s racist to join the Klan; then, it’s racist to not embrace the diversity parade and have at least 11 black friends.

So let’s look at another definition:

The term “nationalism” is generally used to describe two phenomena: (1) the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their national identity, and (2) the actions that the members of a nation take when seeking to achieve (or sustain) self-determination. (1) raises questions about the concept of a nation (or national identity), which is often defined in terms of common origin, ethnicity, or cultural ties, and while an individual’s membership in a nation is often regarded as involuntary, it is sometimes regarded as voluntary. (2) raises questions about whether self-determination must be understood as involving having full statehood with complete authority over domestic and international affairs, or whether something less is required.

It is traditional, therefore, to distinguish nations from states — whereas a nation often consists of an ethnic or cultural community, a state is a political entity with a high degree of sovereignty. While many states are nations in some sense, there are many nations which are not fully sovereign states. As an example, the Native American Iroquois constitute a nation but not a state, since they do not possess the requisite political authority over their internal or external affairs. If the members of the Iroquois nation were to strive to form a sovereign state in the effort to preserve their identity as a people, they would be exhibiting a state-focused nationalism.

Nationalism has long been ignored as a topic in political philosophy, written off as a relic from bygone times. It came into the focus of philosophical debate two decades ago, in the nineties, partly in consequence of rather spectacular and troubling nationalist clashes, such as those in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet republics. The surge of nationalism usually presents a morally ambivalent, and for this reason often fascinating, picture. – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

This definition comes from an excellent source, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. While Wikipedia and other social networks have been beating their chests and bleating about how they’re the “new way,” the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has, with almost no funding and only a few academics, quietly provided a top-notch resource that far exceeds what Wikipedia and social networks can provide.

The point is that nationalism and racism are not the same:

Racism is the idea that there are differences between races, and that one race is superior or inferior to the others. For racism to really be abolished, we must all become one race with one global government to enforce anti-racism.

Nationalism is the idea that for the best of humanity, we should divide ourselves by heritage (a biological record of culture) so that each nation has its own values system and self-rule. It does not address the question of superior/inferior, but is opposed to one world government for any reason.

These two are radically different, and only one part of the picture.

Racism hopes to blame problems on a racial scapegoat. If the Hutus have a bad crop, it must have been Tutsi eating up the seed corn, or something.

Nationalism says that our most basic form of political order is advanced tribalism: people are united by culture, heritage, language, customs and values — instead of being united by political dogma, like “capitalist democracy” versus “socialist authoritarianism,” as they are in the nation-state, which is a political State pretending to be a nation.

Nationalism is a sane order for everyone on earth, as every ethnic group can adopt it to their advantage.

As a basis for future political orders, it lets people achieve a standard in common. They desire certain values; they want to reward certain behaviors. Those two methods are more powerful than even authoritarian governments, as the 20th century showed us. Empires come and empires fall, but culture keeps providing good things.

Culture is, in other words, the ultimate decentralized order.

In the five months since a devastating earthquake struck, Japanese police say they’ve received $78 million in missing cash and valuables that citizens have found in the rubble and promptly turned in.

Thousands of missing wallets contained $48 million in cash, and nearly 6,000 more safes turned in by volunteers contained an extra $30 million, the Japanese Police Agency told ABC News’ Akiko Fujita. Most of the found money has been returned to its owners, after police used identifying documents in the safes to track them down.

“The fact that these safes were washed away meant the homes were washed away too,” Koetsu Saiki of the Miyagi Prefectural police force told ABC News. “We had to first determine if the owners were alive, then find where they had evacuated to.”

Some wallets and safes were most likely pocketed, but the scale of honesty in the wake of disaster is still striking. – Yahoo!

In this life, you’re either a realist or a sentimentalist (I stole this idea from Laeeth Isharc, who communicates with a vocabulary change what most people do in 8-10 single-spaced pages).

The sentimentalist cares about what they are feeling, how things appear, what others think, what effects thinking certain things will have on themselves, etc.

The realist cares about consequences. To the realist, the salient fact about life is that it is consistent. If you do a certain act a certain way, you get a certain result — every time. Amazing as that is, it allows us to plan for the future: when we know what we want, all we have to do is look at how people achieved similar results, and avoid the actions they took that achieved contrary results.

Not rocket science, is it?

A realist would look at this situation and say: “Ethnic homogeneity, strong cultural values, a strong bio-cultural identity, and a population with a high average IQ — these things make for a happy nation.”

A racist would look at this event and say, “That didn’t happen with Katrina, so the problem must be black people.”

The realist would respond:

“That may be how it seems to you right now, but reality is more complex than that.

It seems to me that the lack of a social standard, brought on by multiculturalism and nation-state politics, obliterated your method of having a cultural standard like the Japanese did, so you don’t get ethnic homogeneity, strong cultural values, and a strong bio-cultural identity.

You don’t even get a population with a high average IQ, since unless you have a standard you cannot have exemplary members that you promote above others, encouraging the smarter to breed.

In short, you could have had a center to your society based on ideas everyone agrees is important, but you thought that was too limiting, so you depended on government to enforce ‘rules’ instead. That breaks down not only in big storms, but over time. Good luck with that.”

Nationalism is forming a society around a central idea or ideas that constitute a value standard. This standard is encoded in culture, stored in the genes through heritage, and passed on through the centuries.

We see this most clearly in ethnically homogenous places like Israel, Japan and Finland. Israel in particular was created to preserve the Jewish people, a group formed of the intersection of religion, culture and an ethnic group with two major branches.

Most people are going to complain about Israel outlawing miscegenation, driving out Palestinians and refusing to allow just anyone to show up, sing Hava Nagila and get admitted.

But what Israel is doing is created a better world order. Each ethnic group rules itself, and takes care of itself. No one is to blame for anyone else’s misfortunes. We each do what we must in our own terrain, and if people need world culture, they can get it through TV and take-out food (which is as close as most people come to “diversity”).

Contrast this to societies with mixed-race populations, where one group is always on top for whatever reason, and thus is hated by the other, and so a constant minority-majority class war begins.

For almost a year, police departments in several cities around the country, most noticeably in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Chicago, are investigating “flash mob”-generated violence, in which packs of dozens or even hundreds of youths, organized through social media sites, appear seemingly out of nowhere to commit assaults, robberies, and other crimes against innocent bystanders.

But here is the dirty little secret that PC media has been tiptoeing around all summer—the perpetrators are African-American and the victims are mostly white.

Another layer to this saga that the PC media wishes to ignore is the mounting evidence that the flash mobs could be racially motivated. In other words, black teens may be targeting non-blacks.

Authorities in Wisconsin say they are investigating 11 new allegations of race-based assaults near the state fairgrounds in which the alleged perpetrators were all African-American and the victims were either white or Hispanic. – Erik Uliasz

We don’t like to admit it, either, but the recent riots in the UK were also racially motivated: non-whites against whites and far-east Asians.

Do we blame non-whiteness, as a racist would?

Do we blame whiteness, and the success of white people in business and culture that hasn’t magically spread around the world, as a racist would?

Or do we just point out that in this world, success as a nation comes from having a strong culture, and in order to do that, you must be ethnically homogenous?

Malcolm X (né “Little”) is a hero to all conservatives and this book reveals the enduring power of his thought.

Not only did he re-discover racial nationalism, and argue persuasively for a society in which each ethnic group ruled itself, but he ultimately began to merge that philosophy into something resembling a mainstream conservative position: economically libertarian, socially conservative, with strong nationalist and traditional components.

In doing so, he broke from the traditional victim politics of the left — the white man is keeping us down — to a more holistic vision, which is that no ethnic group will be happy unless it has rule over itself and a positive direction to take.

As part of his mainstream conservatism, he abandoned rhetoric of racial segregation and repatriation, and focused on roles within a collective known as America. The pendulum swung: for as extreme as he was, he now became calmer. However, the pendulum was swinging back already at the time of his death.

If you want to get right down to the real outcome of this so-called “integration,” what you’ve got to arrive at is intermarriage.

I’m right with the Southern white man who believes that you can’t have so-called “integration,” at least not for long, without intermarriage increasing. And what good is this for anyone? Let’s again face reality. In a world as color-hostile as this, man or woman, black or white, what do they want with a mate of the other race?

Certainly white people have served enough notice of their hostility to any blacks in their families and neighborhoods. And the way most Negroes feel today, a mixed couple probably finds that black families, black communities, are even more hostile than the white ones. So what’s bound to face “integrated” marriages, except being unwelcome, unwanted, “misfits” in whichever world they try to live in? What we arrive at is that “integration,” ultimately, would destroy the white race… and destroy the black race.

{…}

“Integration” is called “assimilation” if white ethnic groups alone are involved: it’s fought against tooth and nail by those who want their heritage preserved. Look at how the Irish threw the English out of Ireland. The Irish knew the English would engulf them. Look at the French-Canadians, fanatically fighting to keep their identity. (276-77)

Alex Haley, the author of the underwhelming Roots, claims this book was dictated to him by Malcolm X and represents a small amount of editing. That is likely true: Malcolm X shows himself to be an intelligent, lively, complex intellect with a penchant for autodidacticism. Haley may have edited those words into a more personable narrative, but that’s about it.

The book follows the form of an autobiography laid over a lattice of epiphanies. Malcolm X starts with the role of the ingenue, growing up poor as a racially-charged preacher’s son in rural Michigan, and with each new move he makes in life he is introduced to more of how the world fails. It fails not only black people, but all people.

His early years are a wasteland of drugs, drink, sex, dope dealing, theft, scams and other crimes. He does not record violent crimes so much as crimes of graft and evasion, and how he used white perceptions of black people to be either invisible or written off as harmless.

Through Alex Haley’s fluid onrush of scenes, his prison conversion to Islam seems as natural and soul-saving as it must have to the subject of this auto/biography. We do not know how much of this is Haley and how much comes right from Malcolm, but together the two writers improve on one another.

The book starts to drag slightly after the middle point, as Malcolm/Haley set us up for the downfall of the Nation of Islam — when infighting peaked because of Malcolm’s success, he was ousted and demonized by the same organization that may have had ties to the people who later killed him.

The book is a worthy read in its own right.

For someone who is tired of the modern “we can all get along” illusion and its correspondent hammering of square pegs into round holes, the lucid and unvarnished thinking of a Malcolm X has aspects of divine revelation. Unlike most thinkers who touch on race, Malcolm cuts past social pretense.

Naturally, Malcolm probably found it easier than most because the situation of black Americans was so alien and so obvious that he did not have to deal with the complex social web that a majority-minority must face. Nonetheless, he saw through what so many others could not clearly see.

Here was one of the white man’s most characteristic behavior patterns — where black men are concerned. He loves himself so much that he is startled if he discovers that his victims don’t share his vainglorious self-opinion. (239)

In addition, he fought the same battles with other black nationalists that white nationalists (and others) find among themselves. He was either too extreme, or not extreme enough, and he found that when he looked past this empty complaining, he found a much larger audience among normal people — to the rage of his former cohorts.

One of his biggest struggles was convincing the average African-American that the problem existed, could be solved, and that the situation could actually change. Almost every nationalist or critic of modern society will be familiar with this circular debate, where people agree and then shrug it off.

Following that idea, much of his best rhetoric involves distinguish between fake friends — those who for their own gain use the African-American as a symbol of pity in order to appear altruistic — and those who agree on the basic principle of a better future, which is separate self-rule for both ethnic groups.

You can say for many Southern white people that, individually, they have been paternalistically helpful to many individual Negroes. But the Northern white man, he grins with his teeth, and his mouth has always been full of tricks and lies of “equality” and “integration.” When one day all over America, a black hand touched the white man’s shoulder, and the white man turned, and there stood the Negro saying “Me, too…” why that, Northern liberal shrank from that black man with as much guilt and dread as any Southern white man.

{…}

The word “integration” was invented by a Northern liberal. The word has no real meaning. I ask you: in the racial sense in which it’s used so much today, whatever “integration” is supposed to mean, can it precisely be defined? The truth is that “integration” is an image, it’s a foxy Northern liberal’s smoke-screen that confuses the true wants of the American black man. Here in these fifty racist and neo-racist states of North America, this word “integration” has millions of white people confused, and angry, believing wrongly that the black masses want to live mixed up with the white man. That is the case only with the relative handful of these “integration”-mad Negroes. (272)

All readers, whether white or black or other, will find in this book some profundity. Malcolm X is if nothing else highly observant to underlying motivations, which puts him in good company with social critics like Tom Wolfe and H.L. Mencken. He is cynical in the way that can only be said to be a type of love, in that he loves his people (and bears less hatred toward European-Americans than one might imagine) and believes they can do better.

Alex Haley did a good job with this book by letting us hear Malcolm X at his analytical best; he may have pasted together some of the biographical details, as is hinted at in the introduction, or even combined multiple statements into smoother factual emissions early in the book. But he lets Malcolm talk.

As we approach yet another decade of diversity failing, and the process of multiculturalism — trying to combine two or more cultures including the biological record of culture called “heritage” within the same place, thus resulting in a total destruction of any community standards held in common — us 21st century readers can find few more lucid voices than Malcolm X. He wants what we want: a nationalist world order and ethnic self-rule by every ethnic group.

We can even learn quite a bit about white people. Not only do his zingers smart — he knows his opposition — but his insights into human psychology apply to whites, blacks and every ethnic group. They would apply to super-intelligent lizards forced into struggle for social standards despite the mixing of sub-species. And he knows the force of inertia that slows reform.

Most importantly, however, Malcolm X reveals why people act against their own ethnic interests. This information is probably more important at this point to Caucasians, who in the USA and Europe seem to prefer to publicly act against their self-interests in order to appear Christlike, benevolent and altruistic to the proles.

What I thought I was seeing there in Roxbury were high-class, educated, important Negroes, living well, working in big jobs and positions. Their quiet homes sat back in their mowed yards. These Negroes walked along the sidewalks looking haughty and dignified, on their way to work, to shop, to visit, to church. I know now, of course, that what I was really seeing was only a big-city version of those “successful” Negro bootblacks and janitors back in Lansing. The only difference was that the ones in Boston had been brainwashed even more thoroughly. They prided themselves on being incomparably more “cultured,” “cultivated,” “dignified,” and better off than their black brethren down in the ghetto, which was no further away than you could throw a rock. Under the pitiful misapprehension that it would make them “better,” these Hill Negroes were breaking their backs trying to imitate white people. (40)

Malcolm X’s unerring gaze sees the hidden issue behind race: individuals attempting to climb socially, putting on pretenses so that they appear better than others, and as a result, being completely unwilling to stir up any trouble about the race issue. He describes white people today as thoroughly as he might be describing African-Americans in the 1940s.

Not only is he lucid on issues of race, but through them and his conversion to Islam, he discovers a conservative outlook on the world. Drugs, drink and pursuit of empty desires creates a self-destructive mentality; what is needed is moral discipline, courage, higher principles and a disciplined, focused, purposeful existence. Few people today of any sub-species can claim familiarity with such clarity.

For its honesty and extreme clarity, this book is an excellent read for any citizen of planet earth interested in the future of diversity. As a resolved critic of diversity, Malcolm X shows us why it is impossible and why nationalism is preferable; as a writer, he provokes us to look deep into our own motivations to understand what we truly want out of this situation.

“Fewer than half” sounds cheerful. That’s less than half. That’s not all of them by far.

“Deported” is a really strong word as well.

And “convicted criminals” makes us feel good — there was a trial, and all that.

Now try this:

Almost half — 195,772 — of the foreign nationals repatriated to their home countries had been convicted of crimes, with many more of the 392,862 sent home being suspected felons.

That reads differently.

No longer is the bias engaged in minimizing the impact of the numbers; we see that “almost half” sounds worse than “fewer than half,” even though the number is the same. Even more, the emphasis places the number first, showing us 196,000 felons before we get to the rest of the sentence.

“Repatriated” and “sent home” are kinder and gentler than other terms normally used.

Finally, this passage mentions the difference between “convicted” criminals and those we suspect but haven’t gone through the labor, expense and time of a trial for.

It’s a radically new world when you remove the spin. And whichever spin you choose, the facts remain the same.

Brett Stevens recently pointed out to me that one could launch an attack upon philosophy by stating that language is deceiving; it can be deceptive by deliberate use, by inexact use, or by shifting meanings through time. It hopes to describe truth, reality or pragmatic adaptation through symbol, language and structure – these symbols can be easily manipulated.

I had to admit to Brett that it was hard to defend against such an attack, albeit it might not be impossible. The first step is to make clear that in order to accept this argument, one must already have subscribed to the picture that we are taking in knowledge through symbols. Then it becomes impossible to fact-check whether these symbols are really in accordance with the world, because we can only compare our knowledge with other symbols and not with the world directly. This is the Postmodernist’s claim that our knowledge relates to symbols. They basically argued that all language is a web of references in which the distinction between fact and fiction is ultimately severed because our knowledge relates to our narratio about the world. When we think we are assessing the facts of the world, we are merely playing a language game within the very narratios we’ve constructed.

narratio, n.: the statement of facts

The second part of a classical oration, following the introduction or exordium. The speaker here provides a narrative account of what has happened and generally explains the nature of the case. Quintilian adds that the narratio is followed by the propositio, a kind of summary of the issues or a statement of the charge. – BYU

I suppose the instrumentalist would try to save his neck by saying that it doesn’t matter what those symbols are or what they come from, but that the only thing which matters is whether or not our knowledge allow us to achieve our goals. Question then it, what he would mean by ‘ours’, since the goals he expresses are necessarily borrowed from a web of language. The moment we express ‘the self’ we are articulating a construction. Thus the self is fiction.

0-1 for Postmodernism.

However if the accuracy of knowledge is the only thing that matters, then there can also be no objections against philosophy. Since philosophy is concerned with the accuracy of our knowledge.

The next argument that might be mounted is that “contrary to science, philosophy is of no use.” Question is if science and philosophy can be separated. Not only because science’s greatest heroes considered themselves philosophers, but also because every science comes equipped with a set of core assumptions and philosophy is equipped to investigate these.

“Science gave us penicillin, Science invented the lawn-mower. What did philosophy ever do to make our lives better?”

Think about games such as football, soccer, etc. What’s the use of that? That somebody can run real hard with a ball to the goal, and give hard kicks to a ball. What’s the use of Olympic sports? That somebody can pull himself up on two rings because his arms are real strong. Or what’s the use of video games? Maybe that somebody will develop a sense of strategic ability and reflexes. But then what’s the use of all those abilities and strengths? Do we really need them to survive? Euhm, I guess, no? But then what’s the use of fitness, of body-building? Walking around like you’re going to have to wrestle with a bear which will by all probability never happen . . . But even if all these skills and abilities somehow help us to survive or to be more comfortable, it still doesn’t answer the question what the use is of survival and comfort.

Basically, by constantly inquiring what the utility of some thing is we are creating our own nihilism. ‘Use’ is a term that only makes sense if conceived as the relevance of a thing within a plan of steps to reach a goal. But ultimately people have different goals, so if my goals are not yours, then nothing is useful by definition, and I also won’t be able to express the use of what I happen to be doing . . . I suppose it all goes back to a certain sense of satisfaction that can only be had from sharing it with another.

This is where things get tricky, because now we approach the point where we say the value of goals can only be measured in relation to the narratios of which those goals are part. From that it follows that whether one ought to pursue a specific goal can only be meaningfully discussed as long as one partakes in the same symbolic universe.

Then we’d be basically arguing like Hitler did in Mein Kampf, that the question of objectivity should be immediately disregarded the moment the nation, the race, the people was concerned. According to him, the only question worth objectively considering was how one could expand the power of his own people at the cost of that of the others.

But hey, who’s to blame him if there are ultimately no inherently valuable goals but only goals that are subjectively valuable to those who subscribe to the narratio from which those goals are derived? This also explains why the most fanatical Nazi’s at Nuremberg didn’t consider the trial as a form of punishment, but as conquest. They simply felt they were being judged according to the standards of a narratio that wasn’t their own.

At this point we’re tempted to say that might makes right and that there are no universal standards of justice, values and morality outside of the competition between the different narratios that exist on earth. This is how China, since it subscribes to the Marxist doctrine of base-superstructure, regards the Western idea of Human Rights: As an attempt to ‘colonize’ the legal sphere of other nations.

One could see Nietzsche’s claim coming: That the narratio giving account of itself as being backed by values and standards that are universally true or intrinsically superior, is simply pumping up it’s own power further, without coming clean for the sheer rhetoric nature of that attempt.

But another deeper problem that consequently emerges is this: If everything is just a language game and there is no universal Truth or inherent value to anything, then why would we even do what do? Why would we act in this way and not that one? At first we would think: “Oh cool! We can go to the U.N. and deceive others and grab power. We can do anything if we play it smart!” A moment later we would realize that although we could try to do anything, those pursuits would ultimately be vacuous, sterile, empty.

The reader might be getting curious about what I mean by: ‘universal Truth’. So, if asked to the man, I would give the following example:

“There’s a hierarchy of consciousness, and it is a part of the unmalleability of existence that most of the population dwells on the lowest levels, driven by petty motives. Democracy can only work when the population is wise and critical. When that is not the case, what is needed is a hierarchy lead by sharp minds able to perceive clearly, possess knowledge for a thorough understanding of occurring situations, combined with the Character required for steadfast action and resolution.”

The only way to separate Truth from falsehood in the different existing ideologies is through philosophy.

My conclusion is that I’m not sure if defending philosophy on the grounds of its utility would be the right course of action. Because usefulness always indicates going from situation A to desired situation B. But how do we know when we’re right when we embark for B in the first place? One might as well say the whole of life should just exist to make philosophy possible, so that we can ask ourselves the question what the aim of life is – to then take it on in a serious and objective matter. As a species, we rise above ourselves the moment we realize that, although our life has been given to us, we shouldn’t accept it just because we happen to have it. We should be able to question life. Our ability not to accept a life of no value – therein lies the nobility of the human spirit.

Civilizations are like bodies. Some force holds them together and keeps them alive. When it begins to depart, the body prepares to die as well.

The life-force that animates bodies is still unknown to us and to science. We can guess at it and describe its methods, but we do not know its origin or full cause. We know more about civilizations.

We know that when they start out, they have a kind of common sense, values held in common, and some kind of reverent or religious spirit that is shared by most of the population. When about a fifth of this population (per Jonathan Haidt) ceases to believe, the society begins to fragment and die.

As this process goes on, it goes through many permutations. First, it is outrage against abuses; next, a demand for equality; finally, resentment of those who have anything more than the minimum. The society eats itself from within like a cancer.

A dying society of this type is like a three-legged table. Once having four legs, the table is now broken, but it will still stand — sort of. When you put any weight on the side with the missing leg, it falls over.

People in this dying society are accustomed to gaming the system in order to succeed. That is, instead of focusing on results, they focus on the appearance of results, which is enough to make people check off the box marked “mission accomplished” and pass the buck.

In such societies, you succeed by deception or rather, by doing an adequate job and finding some way to talk it up. That’s a far cry from how you succeed in younger societies, which is by results. Dying societies judge people by social means; young societies judge them by consequences and results.

When you as a person trapped in a dying society walk up to the table, and put something on it, you’re going to have to put that object on the sides which have working legs, toward the edge. However, there’s no room there anymore — everyone else has put their objects there.

Instead, you’re going to make your first attempts by putting your object on the weak side. The broken table will promptly fall over. You will then say, “This table appears to be broken.” That is the signal for the vultures to attack.

Each of these vultures will be thinking the same thing: if I make this guy (or gal) look stupid, and defend my interest and that of my friends in doing so, people are going to think I’m a good person. They attack with hatred and bile.

They will tell you: “This table isn’t broken. You’re just doing it wrong.”

Even though all evidence is to the contrary, they will insist that the table has four legs. Or that despite having four sides, it should only have three legs. They may even get postmodern and insist that it must have three legs to avoid even numbers which imply justifications for totalitarianism.

The comedy will be ripe for the aliens watching from orbit. I imagine them in one of their ridiculously advanced spacecraft, looking down at this puny world of wretched internal combustion engines. Prof. Xzyyvlortxcyz says, “Class, observe this late-life civilization which has not overcome its own inertia.”

Then he fast-forwards through time a little bit to show the students what’s left in two thousand years, which is exactly what was there two million years ago: a few hominids bashing each other with rocks, getting eaten by tigers, and crouching fearfully in caves at night. The end result of “progress.”

Back here on earth, we still struggle with schizophrenia. The public says the table is fine; we know from experience that it is broken. If we say that out loud, we get beaten by the crowd, called insane and tossed out of our jobs.

In the meantime, whether the table is broken or not, what’s clear is that we cannot use it to its full potential. It can only carry maybe a fourth of the weight it once did. This, too, causes problems and those, too, cannot be spoken of.

As a result, while fixing the leg is probably not as hard as we think it is, from fear of social consequences, we avoid even entertaining the possibility.

From this totalitarianism of social judgment, we shrink in fear, and so our society keeps lumping along with a broken table. Things just get worse and worse as the dysfunction spreads as we try to shift the burden and the blame. Eventually, it all falls apart entirely.

But even with this in mind, no one wants to be the first to say the table is broken. That’s akin to self-sacrifice. And in a time of lies in a dying civilization, the last thing you want to do is die for a lost cause.

We are slowly killing off our big animals. Since it is unpopular to mention this, our cowardly leaders will not mention it to avoid upsetting our voters; they, in turn, don’t want to hear about how their mundane acts may lead to vast and evil consequences.

After all, we all want the big suburban home, the aircraft carrier of an SUV, the endless stream of toys and gadgets and consumer entertainment products. Or at least, the vast majority do, so that those of us who do not are statistically insignificant.

For this reason, what I’m about to say is shocking — shockingly obvious, that is. Obvious both in its content and in why it is hidden away. It’s like talking about death at weddings or money at funerals.

A large black cat believed to be a panther is stalking the fields and forests of southern Tuscany, striking fear into residents and holidaymakers. Hunters have angered animal rights campaigners by offering to kill it, but the debate is academic — “Bagheera” is running rings around its pursuers.

{…}

What is to be done? Hunters say the dangerous animal should be driven out of the forest by beaters, and killed. Farmers say “give us guns, we’ll take care of it.” But animal welfare groups are up in arms at the suggestion, and have reminded the people of Prata that panthers are a protected species. They won’t even accept putting out live bait such as chickens or rabbits.

The controversy echoes the tale of Bruno the brown bear who wandered into Germany from Austria and eluded hunters for weeks, gorging himself on live sheep and honey, until he was shot dead, to the dismay of his many fans. – Der Spiegel

Wild animals are generally fearful of humans. Why would they come out?

For one thing, the easy chow is tempting.

More likely, however, they’re out of space to wander. Humans have pressed in on their territory, so they are heavily confined and looking for new spaces to roam.

Imagine being in solitary confinement for the rest of your life. Even if your cell was 100′ x 100′, it would still be seeing the same old stuff… every day.

Researchers have revealed results of a global camera trap study that has captured nearly 52,000 images. Camera traps placed in seven protected areas in the Americas, Africa and Asia have documented 105 species ranging from mice to elephants — and even varieties of humans from tourists to poachers. The study has also helped solidify reasons for mammal decline, including habitat encroachment and smaller wildlife reserves.

According to Conservation International, “Analysis of the photographic data has helped scientists confirm a key conclusion that until now, was understood through uncoordinated local study: habitat loss and smaller reserves have a direct and detrimental impact on the diversity and survival of mammal populations.” – Treehugger

For the last thirty years, the media has kept you on edge with talk of what discrete threats might eliminate animal species.

It’s always something that can be isolated from “life as usual,” like an optional or fringe behavior, or a single corporation or country.

They never state the obvious: constant human expansion on a finite planet means less room for plants, animals and ecosystems.

At some point, you confine them so much that like prisoners in solitary, they go numb and incoherent, and stop feeding themselves well.

And breeding. The demise of the species is then not far off.

And what happened to them was physical. EEG studies going back to the nineteen-sixties have shown diffuse slowing of brain waves in prisoners after a week or more of solitary confinement. In 1992, fifty-seven prisoners of war, released after an average of six months in detention camps in the former Yugoslavia, were examined using EEG-like tests. The recordings revealed brain abnormalities months afterward; the most severe were found in prisoners who had endured either head trauma sufficient to render them unconscious or, yes, solitary confinement. Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury.

On December 4, 1991, Terry Anderson was released from captivity. He had been the last and the longest-held American hostage in Lebanon. I spoke to Keron Fletcher, a former British military psychiatrist who had been on the receiving team for Anderson and many other hostages, and followed them for years afterward. Initially, Fletcher said, everyone experiences the pure elation of being able to see and talk to people again, especially family and friends. They can’t get enough of other people, and talk almost non-stop for hours. They are optimistic and hopeful. But, afterward, normal sleeping and eating patterns prove difficult to reëstablish. Some have lost their sense of time. For weeks, they have trouble managing the sensations and emotional complexities of their freedom.

For the first few months after his release, Anderson said when I reached him by phone recently, “it was just kind of a fog.” – New Yorker

Like most conditions, this probably exists on a spectrum.

When you have enough space, you’re happy. But below that threshold, the alienation sets in — in proportion to how much space that you need which you do not have.

We are slowly forcing animals into corners. We are reducing them from wide-ranging, healthy creatures to confined, crowded and miserable ones (kind of like our cities).

The result is that at some point desperation sets in, and the animal rages out of its confinement. It probably knows on some level that it will die for this act.

As a result, the animals are getting bolder and more violent.

A DISTRAUGHT mother listened on a mobile phone as her teenage daughter was eaten alive by a brown bear and its three cubs.

Olga Moskalyova, 19, gave an horrific hour-long running commentary on her own death in three separate calls as the wild animals killed her.

The comic dimensions of such a protracted miserable death aside, we can see how the hopelessness of woodland creatures leads them to become more vicious.

They have nothing to lose.

And we refuse to talk about what is surely the cause, and will be the cause of their demise as species. It’s passive genocide: we just keep expanding, and denying that a problem exists, and if the animals attack us, we kill them. Someday they just vanish and we assume they just weren’t competitive, or something.

It gets mentioned rarely, and never as the headline of the article. Our passive aggression against plants and animals motivates us to think first of human losses, and only secondarily to care in any way about what we’re destroying.

We never think, “Are all these new humans good people?” — instead, we treat every life as sacred. Every person must be important. Or at least more important than all those animals we are exterminating.

The double killing is the latest in a spate of bear attacks across ­Russia, as the hungry animals seek food in areas where people have ­encroached and settled on their former habitat.

If you make the truth inconvenient, and make sure there is zero social reward for it, most people will ignore it. They will assume that someone else will take care of it, since we have this vast society with people whose jobs involve worrying about these things.

But those people cannot help. The solution concerns the whole of humanity: we must limit and reduce our growth. That is however an unpopular topic, because that means that not everyone gets to live the dream, or even live. It forces us to make hard decisions about which people we value and which we do not.

As a result, we avoid dealing with it, and our passive genocide against the creatures continues.

A week or two ago, I had a bright idea: I decided to try being a Leftist.
“Why not?” I thought. “Everybody’s doing it. Maybe there is something to it…”
I climbed up a ladder, dispensing with due care and attention. After all: equality of outcomes is a good thing.

After I fell, to the sound of cracking bones and tearing ligaments, I basked in the glorious sunshine, amid waves of agonizing pain, thinking how wonderful it was, to not be prejudiced against such outcomes. I was glad I had decided not to discriminate against broken bones and enduring discomfort. I felt liberated.

Later that same day, while smearing Arnica cream over my swollen ankle, I marveled at the wonderful vibrancy of color that transformed my formerly mundane white-man’s ankle into a diverse rainbow of multi-hued suffering. This was a definite improvement. A shame, I thought, that my entire body could not be instantly transformed into such a state, but for some things, change must come by degrees. At least I had a broken elbow to add to my diversity. Both were glowing examples of well-rounded puffiness, that made a mockery of outdated ideas about the correct proportions for human body parts.

And now I could not work on my carport. Great! I could play the victim instead. Why bother working, anyway, when my willing wife could coddle me and cater to my every whim? This was fun! I rebuked her when she expressed sympathy. As if to suggest that my condition was deserving of pity. She soon saw her prejudice for what it was, and undertook to no longer discriminate against differing outcomes. And we both were very happy.

A day or two later, we chanced to meet a local Amerind, and engaged him in conversation. Had anyone witnessed us doing this, they could not have failed to be impressed that we white folks were hobnobbing with a representative of a race not our own. Sadly, nobody else was in the vicinity, but there will, I hope, be other opportunities to impress passers-by.
I enquired as to why Indians were no longer called Indians, but now were known as either Natives, or First-Nations. He was a pleasant fellow, and after due consideration, allowed as to how the term “Indian” suggested drunkenness, and so had been retired from current usage.
Which I found somewhat odd.
By changing the name, the drunkenness goes away?
I, for one, had never connected the term “Indian” with drunkenness, but what do I know, anyway? I took him at his word, and enquired as to why the term “Native”, was any better.
After all, we are all natives of somewhere.
But white men do not use that term, he said, to describe themselves, and so it means Indian, now. A little perturbed at his seeing Natives and Whites as in some way different, I kept my counsel, not wishing to mar an otherwise exemplary conversation. While smirking to myself at the irony of the situation: that he probably didn’t even own a Tipi, whereas I did.

But the real test of my new-found Leftism came as I visited my local health-food store, recently taken over by new management. I was shocked to my core, and outraged!
Gone were the Amnesty International signs, along with their graphic illustrations of people undergoing torture and being executed. Gone were the Pro-Palestine slogans, and Eat-The-Rich posters. There was no sign of the Racism-Free-Zone” stickers, and prominently displayed advertising of “Safe Harbor” for victims of racist, homophobic and unfeministic assaults.
For Heaven’s sake! Have you ever tried enjoying a healthy meal without these Leftist condiments?

I pondered all of these things, as I eyed the delicious gluten-free black bean brownies.
I was sorely tempted to forego the delights on offer, but it was the thought of never again being able to knock-back a Vegetable-Everything-Juice, in my righteous conviction to boycott such an establishment, that finally decided me:

I guess I am just not cut out for Leftism.
I simply can not bring myself to loathe anyone who can still think for themselves, make their own decisions, act upon those decisions, and still be able to dish up superbly healthy meals. Any more than I can favor a world of hurt over a reasoned and experienced existence.
Even the Indian got my approval, for being… An Indian. For a rose by any other name…

And so I have returned to my warped little world of neolithic balance.
Neither Left, nor Right, clever, nor stupid, saint nor sinner, good, nor bad.
I may have failed at being a Leftist, but nobody could reasonably accuse me of never having tried.

We live in a time with one commandment, which is that we must all be equal.

For this reason, we make excuses any time reality comes short of that entropian/Utopian notion.

In the same way people attack the wrong political targets because they are afraid of violating a sacred cow, we ignore that sacred cow and in fact lie consummately about it in order to avoid the issue.

Where there might be a rational explanation, or we might even be able to achieve resolution to the problem, people do not even want to see the problem — it challenges too many of the assumptions upon which they rest their oblivion hopeful that everything will turn out alright if they just keep doing what they want to.

What colour is Mark Duggan? Mark Duggan is the man who was shot dead by the police on Thursday in Tottenham. The Tottenham riots last night were sparked when people protested his death. This morning, I first heard of the riots on the radio, then on the television. I read articles on the internet. But oddly, no one would say what colour Mark Duggan was. No one would say the unsayable, that the rioters were, I suspect on the whole, black. Then, finally, Toby Young’s Telegraph blog post on the riots was published. Is Toby Young the only journalist out there who will dare say that these riots are about race?

Still, one paper did carry a photo of Mr Duggan. When I saw the photo, it confirmed what I knew instinctively: black youths once again have set London alight.

{…}

Then [the police officer] told me that 80 per cent was black on black gun crime, and that of the remaining 20 per cent about 75 per cent involved at least one black person: black shooting white, or white shooting black. I pushed to know more. While he kept saying his stats were crude and he didn’t have scientific numbers, on the whole the whites who were involved in these shootings tended to be from Eastern Europe.

{…}

Problems cannot be addressed unless people are willing to tell the truth. As with so many other things in this country, we stick our heads in the sand and refuse to speak out about it. – The Telegraph

These have been made complicated because, after the initial wave of riots, other people joined in giving the riots a truly multicultural character. This does not disguise their origin: a race riot based on a police action against a person of minority status.

But not so complicated as to justify the response, which has been to make excuses. By making excuses, I mean inventing alternate scenarios for what could be the response, as obvious to the obvious: diversity is not working, there is massive distrust and as a result, you have race riots.

However, our media does something clever — they take a contributing cause and try to make it the cause. This is like someone noticing that a your family got robbed and gang-rape and saying, “Oh, well, she had a Gucci purse. A GUCCI purse! He can’t resist Gucci.”

Many of London’s teenagers have been rioting because they “lack hope” and “feel let down by society”, according to youth group leaders.

“Young people are bored and feel they have nothing to lose,” said former gang member Kim Gardner, who now mentors young people in gangs to try to help them turn their lives around.

But young people BBC London spoke to warned other teenagers, who have been taking to London’s streets, that rioting is not the solution.

Nevil Fenton, 17, who witnessed looting taking place in his neighbourhood in Hackey, east London, on Monday night, said troublemakers were “putting a strain on their own communities”.

“If you’re angry at the police, why set fire to shops?” he asked. – BBC

That’s a good question, Nevil. The answer is that “lacking hope” and “angry at the police” are not reasons, but justifications.

They don’t know why they’re rioting. General upset is part of it; a trained helplessness that teaches them that only burning things gets the attention of their overlords, that’s certainly part of it. However, under that is a simpler reason: diversity doesn’t work, and so they’re miserable and angry.

Also, as pointed out above, for reasons unknown, minority groups both white (Eastern European) and non-white seem to have higher rates of crime than impoverished people of indigenous origins. We don’t need to figure out why, right now; a fact’s validity is not contingent upon its cause, but that it exists.

If these people simply lacked hope, they would do what people have done in every other generation: band together and start their own economy as best they can.

Something else is afoot. However, it’s worth mentioning that the media told you a partial truth — their emotional state may contribute to their unhinged, amoral, destructive, dysfunctional and self-defeating behavior.

Here’s another partial truth:

The blazing infernos which took hold in the UK’s biggest cities have shocked British society. It wasn’t a desire to protest that drove the brutal looters onto the streets, but pure consumer greed. Bankers, politicians and media moguls have made this greed socially acceptable.

{…}

It was pictures like these that disproved the theory that the riots were protests, or a youth rebellion like those that have taken place in other European countries against government austerity packages.

It was nothing of the sort. The events which unfolded on the streets of London and other English cities last week were brutal and full of an enthusiasm to inflict the greatest possible damage, even on mere passers-by who had the bad luck to get in the way. It was as if the gang from Stanley Kubrick’s classic film “A Clockwork Orange” had left the screen and become real, only this time armed with BlackBerrys. – Spiegel

We are desperate to blame anyone but the perpetrators.

It was Santa Claus; all those gifts he keeps waving around, like a red flag to a bull…

Definitely, the decline of our society into greed is a problem. But it’s not the problem here.

Our media will make any excuses to avoid seeing the obvious, because the obvious requires they sacrifice two sacred cows: (a) diversity — which doesn’t work — and (b) the equality of all human beings, which has been proven untrue. Not every impoverished person who wanted a Gucci went out and rioted.

We are all baffled: why is this so hard to discuss?

Moving on, we’ve just had the England riots right in front of us. But what’s new? The 60s had plenty of “Burn Baby Burn” moments, which got our attention and caused us to act—to move the hell out of those neighborhoods. We’ve had our Seattles, our East Cincinnatis, our Wichitas, our Knoxvilles, our wildings, our flash mobs . . . This cannot be hidden.

And yet . . .

So I guess I’m left with the same question I started with: “What will it take before we wake up and DO something?” – TOO

What we’re fighting against here is the deepest principle of our civilization since the Enlightenment: that everyone is equal.

If that falls, diversity falls, and so does class warfare. Suddenly, some people are born to be servants and some to rule the manor, again.

Every single thing you read, hear or see in the media rebels against that.

It violates the spirit of the French revolution, of democracy itself, of liberalism, and even of what we think of as politeness. To turn to your neighbor and say, “Bill, I don’t mean to be a prick, but God gave me an IQ of 122 and you an IQ of 115, so I’m the boss and you fix the rotors.”

To finally admit that our professionals are the people clustered around 125 IQ points. And even to admit less tangible things as true: that character is mostly inborn, but made not through coddling but through challenge, and that some people — most people — are as thoughtless as animals and should never be given much choice about their destiny.

We have been hiding for so long from the fact that the average person, if given a chance, will run up his credit debt buying giant cars, huge homes, spending wastefully, etc. Not everyone can manage their own lives well.

And to admit all these things unravels most of what we’ve spent the last 200 years doing, casts doubt on several of our wars, and requires we restructure our society. It freaks people out.

The alternative should freak them out more: by insisting on paradoxical information, we slowly but surely destroy our civilization from within.